The Right Way to Manage Salespeople

What's the best way to demotivate your salesforce? Unilaterally setting a sales target and then shoving it down their throats.

“People, especially salespeople, don’t like being dictated to,” says Joel Deceuster, founder of Deceuster & Associates, a consulting and business coaching firm. He believes the old school of sales management tells people what to do. But the new school invites salespeople into the process of setting quotas and goals, allowing them to figure out what they are capable of achieving.

If you think this sounds like letting the inmates run the asylum, think again. According to one manager, the great paradox is that salespeople will invariably come up with a more aggressive sales goal when left to their own devices than if their manager sets the target.

“If you tell a salesperson he must do $2 million dollars next year, he will call you crazy and say it’s impossible,” says the sales manager. “But if you work with salespeople and encourage them to analyze their accounts, they’ll come up with a number that is consistently higher than what you would have set yourself. It’s really a shocking phenomenon.” So shocking that this manager often has to encourage his people to adjust their optimism and set slightly more realistic goals.

The secret sauce in the goal-setting formula is accountability. If salespeople feel like they helped shape the overall plan, they have a personal stake in the outcome. “By including your salespeople, you give them added motivation to succeed,” says Deceuster. “But without inclusion, salespeople will figure out the best excuses in the world why they can’t achieve.”